The Silver Path
by SSTR87
Summary: This story takes place during the events of God Emperor of Dune. When Paul and Leto II Atreides' argument opens a different path, can Paul save his son from living out the Golden Path or is it too late? It may not be the much sought after Golden Path, but will The Silver Path be just as good?


**The Silver Path**

Leto released an exasperated sigh as he allowed his mind to flow. His external senses expanded into a realm only he and his father dared to go. Here was a place considered forbidden by the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers, the witches that once cuckolded the empire of the scattered human race.

As Leto felt his body release his spirit, he found himself surrounded by an expanse of, for lack of a better description, colors. Each shade of a varying hue represented one possible timeline through a series of particular events, whereas another line represented something else. Today, while he had set forth many years ago to follow the Golden Path, he was venturing along a long-since dead line. Tracing back the collapsed timeline to its point of origin.

This one timeline was silver in its color and as it was a dead timeline, the color had a dull tinge to it, and felt cold and empty. As Leto expanded his senses and ventured his way down the dead line he was met with flashes, inspirations that would seem to bring to life the silver line once more. It was almost as if varying Reverend Mothers and Truthsayers in history tried to reattain this line. However as quickly as the flash would begin, something would invariably derail the path, ending in the path that led unerringly to his father, the first male Bene Gesserit, a perfect Mentat, an omniscient preacher, a god-emperor to the people and a general without equal.

Leto scoffed with derision, seeing an image of his father standing beside him in the timeflux. "You really were held quite high, father," he noted, his large, wormlike body jostling with barely restrained fury.

Paul closed his eyeless sockets and looked to the ground in shame. "You have to believe that I never wanted this to happen, s-"he began only for Leto's tail to thrash angrily, slamming the timestream and causing a tremendous ripple affect. For a moment, brief as it was, The Sliver Path awakened. A set of eyes long-since closed, finally opened.

"No!" Leto admonished, his voice coming out as a gurgled rumble. The thick brown skin of the god-emperor swelled and writhed with the agitation that the man felt. "You don't have the right to call me that!" Paul turned away his head in shame as he slowly ebbed away, leaving Leto to his ministrations of the timelines.

"A father would never have foisted this burden on his own children! To watch as my mother, my aunt, and my sister died..." he sobbed quietly, alone in the stream of time. "What man could call himself a father and still do such a thing?" he asked, somberly.

TSP

Elsewhere, somewhere along the stream of time a set of crimson eyes gazed in amazement as she watched not one, but two men traveling about the timestream without the use of a gais. Neither seemed to possess any magical presence and as far as she could tell her princess and the other Senshi didn't seem to be around.

"What's going on here? Before I fell dormant the Senshi were well on their way to achieving Crystal Tokyo... Now there's nothing..." she grumbled. Using her ties to the Gates of Time, the young-looking woman began to replay the key events of history, watching in sorrow as each of the Outer Senshi laid down their life for the Princess, and even more sorrow and tragedy as the Inner Senshi did the same, all for Usagi to defeat the final and greatest foe of her teenage life.

Granted Usagi was able to win the battle, but the cost was high; the Ginzuisho, a very powerful magical orb was expended of its energies in the final burst of power, granting Usagi the victory but leaving her without any of her friends. With the orb lifeless, and the Moon Princess without any of her former guardians or generals, Usagi gave up on the task of creating a new world, and died along with countless millions of others when the world was reshaped due to an atomic war.

Since the fall of the Silver Millennium Guardians, the human race has managed to raise itself up and spread to consume the cosmos. She watched as armies and nations rose to power and subsequently fell time after time again and again. Then she watched in awe as a new drug called Spice Melange came into being, enabling humans with foresight and great knowledge.

However the biggest shocker occurred when she spotted a man staring at her through the timestream. A man with naturally brown eyes that suddenly changed to the most spectacular blue, seemingly glowing. "What are you doing here? No Bene Gesserit witch is allowed to even gaze upon this place, much less enter here," the voice asked of her, seeming genuinely confused.

The woman's crimson eyes addressed the man with a calculating look. He was tall, at least a head and shoulders taller than her. His frame was solid and as she glared the man down she watched as he grew older and more muscular until his eyes melted away and his face was scarred with sun damage. Finally he stood before her, looking to all the world as if he were in his fifties, his skin dark, darker even than hers, his youthful sandy hair was now lifeless and dry from years of standing in the open sunlight, his lips were parched and dried, cracked in many places and his voice rang out heavy and raspy, as if he'd spent most of his life lacking water.

"Again I ask you!" he thundered, his tone brooking no argument as he beheld the woman before him. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, had a slender figure, red eyes with purple hair that stood out in its vibrancy. Paul Atreides took a step forward, approaching the confused woman. "If you refuse to answer me, then I will just have to rip it out of you!" he threatened.

The crimson-eyed woman stared in awe as her entire being seemed to open up to the man before her. There was no secret she could keep from this man as his missing eyes gazed upon her. She trembled slightly, falling to her knees as Paul continued to invade her. He pinned the woman the ground with a gesture of his hand as he ripped from her the last vestiges of her life experiences.

"B-but... How?" was all that the woman could get out. Even then her voice was croaky like a frogs. All of her years of experience and training seemed to be for naught as she could not even summon the strength to call for her weapon, magic as it is. "Who are you?"

Paul closed his eyes and "sealed" the woman back up. "My name is not important, but rather you have the potential to do for me something that I myself should have done long ago..." he stated cryptically. "It is time to bring back The Silver Path..."

At his words, Setsuna, as her name was, released a shudder. There was something radically different about this man. If there was something that he couldn't accomplish on his own, given the power he displayed, then she was fearful for life of what task he had planned for her.

**End of Preface**


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